Press Releases

IPA grows in strength as six new members set to join in 2018

Details

October 13, 2017

The entire IPA Membership now stands at 76 member associations in 65 countries, another significant boost to the IPA’s global visibility and influence.

The IPA yesterday welcomed publishers’ associations from Malaysia, Nepal, Panama and Singapore as Provisional Members, as well as the Motovun Group of International Publishers and the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Centre as its first ever Patron Members, after a vote at the IPA General Assembly, in Frankfurt.

The IPA now is the collective voice of tens of thousands of publishing companies and stakeholders worldwide that together serve close to six billion people.

The General Assembly (GA), which is the highest decision-making body of the Geneva-based IPA, agreed that these new applicants had met the required conditions to become members.

Also at the Frankfurt GA, four publishers’ associations from Bangladesh, Greece, Jordan and Peru that had been Provisional Members were accepted as Full Members.

Welcoming the new members, IPA President Dr Michiel Kolman said: ‘It’s tremendous to see that every year the IPA grows in strength and reach with the arrival of new organizations that want to align themselves with our mission and values. The founding tenets of protection of copyright and the promotion of freedom to publish are as crucial to modern publishing in its various forms as they were 121 years ago when the IPA was born.’

He added: ‘The addition of two new membership categories – Patron and Extraordinary – under last year’s statute changes reflects a growing recognition of the IPA’s relevance across multiple arenas. The arrival in the IPA family of the Motovun Group and the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Centre signals another evolutionary step that will project our voice further than ever before.’